BamaATL

Reason 6,386,503 why the Sheriff's Office and elected police officials need to go the way of the Dodo.

Given what we know of the Secret Service lately, there is every reason to believe that they shot at their own agents, or they tripped and fell while running with a gun. We will have to wait to see an official report and actual accounts of the events, but I'd give even money that there is a comical element to the actual shots fired portion of this. Honestly, that's sad, because prior to recent events, the Secret Service has had a pretty good reputation for the last 40 years or so of being on top of their shit. Between this and the clown show in Pennsylvania, to say that their reputation has taken a hit would be a bit of an understatement. These are people known for rightfully taking their jobs extremely seriously, and this has to be extremely embarrassing to them all.

We've been actively looking for well under 50 years (seriously anyway) and there is every reason to believe we haven't been looking for the correct things. I'd say there is pretty good reason to believe that haven't done enough looking just yet to pack it in, but maybe that's me.

Those are examples of societal collapses, not species. Though each of those societies did collapse, people survived from each (with the exception of perhaps Easter Island) and despite their individual collapses, the species moved forward and thrived. Our population is actually on pace to peak latter this century and then retract. We are close to being able to put people on another planet, and that's without there being any real will or expediency to do so. Just imagine, if it were pressing, and there was global will to the point of say 5% of the global gdp, could we do it in the next few years, the answer is absolutely. Again, there is nothing in our collective history that says we can't do something, matter of fact, any time someone has said that they've repeatedly been proven wrong, sometimes it just takes a while. Great accomplishments, like the Apollo program (just as an example, and space to boot) require great will and financing. When both collide, we can do much. I get that pessimism is the flavor of the day, especially politically and all that, but now is nothing more than a blip on the radar, and it to shall pass. If you consider our collective accomplishments in just the last 500 years, even with all the bad mixed in, I'd bet on us well before I'd bet against us. Tasks that seem like miracles to the vast majority of people during that time frame and now are day to day normalcy for us. 100 years from now, things that seem like miracles to us will be mundane to everyday people. That isn't to say we won't have missteps, go in the wrong direction from time to time, etc.

I don't know what is true, and what isn't, but the Ukrainians are already refuting that this guy had any real ties to the foreign legion.

Don't know how to embed the long tweet, worth a click.

I think I'm not doing a good job of expressing what I mean. Yes, it's possible that civilizations, including our own could snuff themselves out (in my opinion, extraordinarily rare). However, that isn't why we aren't finding other civilizations of yet. If we were to go out searching the cosmos for signs of the Gutenberg printing press, guess what, we could search for billions of years and never find anything. That having been said, this invention was incredibly important to our own development, so you can't say it wasn't evolutionary important to us. The more likely scenario isn't that there aren't other civilizations, it's that we aren't looking for the correct signatures because we don't yet know ourselves, and radio transmissions aren't it. I'm not saying this is correct either, but consider our understanding and only recent ability to detect gravitational waves, for all we know, these can be used for carrier signals.

Jesus Terry, the tacos cost more than your hand jobs!

As a point of personal policy, I now steer well clear of anyone decked out head to toe in American flag gear, just like people loudly speaking or singing to Jesus.

You forgot 9/26 the Jan 6th previously redacted portion of the indictment becomes public.

Disasters, man made or otherwise aren't just likely but will happen, but as to the eradication of our species and knowledge, right now there is very little that would ultimately do that, barring a super nova in our vicinity. There is every reason to believe that at least a portion of humanity would survive just about every forseeable scenario. That doesn't mean that our growth as a species wouldn't be impacted or stunted for a while, it would be, eradicated, no. That's sort of like saying anyone that survived such an event, for no reason in particular, would revert to living in mud huts and utilizing only stone age techniques and completely shun the knowledge we have in perpetuity. As to that applying to the Drake equation, it's likely that any other civilization also went thru this sort of period, but even in spite of disasters, self made or natural, survived it. Could we make this harder on ourselves, or in the case of another civilization could they have made this harder on themselves, absolutely. However, I find it extremely unlikely that in either case a species would self eradicate, to include our own, even potentially in spite of ourselves. A bad actor or actors could certainly do a lot of damage, but there is nothing to suggest they could eradicate the planet, not even close. The more likely reality is that we are looking for the wrong signatures, simply because we don't understand them yet. You don't use a rotary phone anymore, no one has in years, yet in searching the cosmos, that's sort of like what we are doing, because for now, that's what we know.

The "R" is Russian shorthand for getting teabagged.

The Drake equation is full of variables we can only make educated guesses at, but this is certainly one of the biggest, be it climate damage, nuclear war, biologic weapons, etc. There are a couple of things I think are widely overlooked when it comes to this guess work. We make the presumption that the way things are in our time is how they will always be, call it recency bias or something along those lines. However, our own history tells us this is ridiculous. Humans have the ability to course correct, and actually our history points to us doing exactly that. That isn't to say we won't have new problems and challenges, but the thought that we won't overcome our own poor decisions just isn't there. Mind you, that doesn't mean we won't make disaster like decisions, but eliminate progress all together, extremely unlikely. The other thing that is hard to fathom is just how different from a technology standpoint things will be say 100 years from now. If you think about it 100 years ago, radio was basically in it's infancy, we are still using the basic principles today. Rocketry was just beginning, and I think it was Neil DeGrasse Tyson who called this ghetto way to get to space. Right now, it's what we got, but that doesn't mean it will be forever. I read a book a long time ago about technology and it's changes thru out history. In Roman times, we quadrupled our technical knowledge and ability about every 800 years, by the middle ages that was down to about 400 years, by the American Revolution every 100 years, and when the book was written, sometime in the 90s we were doing about every 16 months. The point is, our limitations are really only our collective will and imagination. To think that we won't overcome that isn't realistic to me.

I go to the same gym as a guy who works as an umpire for a crew in the Sunbelt, and what he was telling me is that this is true. They are having an increasingly difficult time getting people to work as officials on field.

The scouting report for Beck is future serial killer.

Just gives smug ass McElroy more time to honor us with his pontification.

You punt it out of the stadium, what are you talking about McDonough.

And Beck looks like he strained his shoulder or something like that.

Well, things should get interesting now.

Yeah most teams do that going into a bye.

Probably not as bad as his real life, but yeah.

No wonder Kentucky is playing well, they got Bonecrusher blasting on the kicking offs.

It's just really difficult to say with anyone this early in the season, sample size and all. Tight ball games that surprise us now maybe won't with the benefit of hindsight.

I've had a feeling for a while the UGA was seriously gonna miss McKonkey and Bowers, just didn't think it would shine like this.

Wasn't the line like 16 and a hook?